The pedagogy of porter: The origins of the reformatory in the cape colony, 1882–1910

This article explores the origins and nature of the reformatory in Cape colonial society between 1882 and 1910. Born in a period of economic transition, its concern was with the reproduction of a labouring population precipitated by colonial conquest. Unlike the prison and compound, which gained their distinctive character from the way in which they were articulated to an emerging industrial capitalist society, the reformatory was shaped by the imperatives of merchant capital and commercial agriculture. Although based on the English model, local social realities quickly began to mould the particular nature of the reformatory in the Cape Colony. Firstly, classification for the purposes of control came to mean segregation in a colonial context. Secondly, the needs of commercial agriculture meant that in Porter there was a much greater stress on the apprenticing of inmates than there was in the internal operations of the British reformatory.